‘This is Santino,’ Poppy announced. ‘He was all alone in the bar, so we asked him if he would like to hang out with us. I hope no one objects?’
‘No objection from me,’ Davina murmured. ‘I’ll be happy to hang out with him any day. She looked at Arianna. ‘You are rather over-dressed, darling. Aren’t you going to get changed?’
‘I forgot to bring a bikini with me.’ Arianna had not planned to spend the afternoon on the yacht and she was feeling hot and uncomfortable in her skinny jeans.
‘I have a spare you can borrow.’ Davina fished into her bag and pulled out a turquoise bikini. ‘You’re bigger up top than me so the cup size may be a bit small.’ She shrugged. ‘But it might mean you get noticed by our sexy new guest.’
Attracting Santino’s attention was the last thing she wanted to do, Arianna thought darkly when she returned to the deck wearing the borrowed bikini. The top was strapless and she was scared to move in case her breasts spilled out. She looked across the deck and saw him surrounded by a group of girls, including the twins and Davina.
Following her out to the yacht was taking his bodyguard duties too far. But his real job and the reason her father had hired Santino was to make sure she stayed out of the newspaper headlines, she reminded herself. She lay back on a sun lounger and flicked through a magazine but it was difficult to ignore Santino’s sexy, accented voice mingled with the high-pitched laughter of the girls who flocked around him.
Evidently he was too busy enjoying himself to take any notice of her. Arianna felt a hot rush of jealousy that made her furious with herself. She was no longer that person who needed to be the centre of attention. She’d grown up and taken charge of her life, or at least she had made a start. Santino made her revert to the old Arianna, the person she hadn’t liked, the person she had vowed never to be again.
Cursing beneath her breath, she jumped up and walked along the deck away from Santino and his fan club of adoring females. At the stern of the yacht she saw Hugo Galbraith, whom she had dated briefly, about to take one of the jet-skis out.
‘Hop on,’ he called to her. ‘I’ll take you for a ride.’
Arianna glanced over her shoulder and saw Posy Van Deesen perch herself on Santino’s knees. The Dutch beauty was all over him like a rash. Not that Santino seemed to mind, she thought irritably. On impulse she grabbed a life-jacket and stepped down to the docking platform so that she could climb onto the jet-ski. She sat behind Hugo, but as she fastened the straps on the life-jacket she realised that it was too big. Hugo had already started the engine and he opened the throttle to send the jet-ski skimming over the sea.
‘Go back,’ she shouted, but the jet-ski was moving fast and her words were whipped away on the breeze. She held on tightly around Hugo’s waist, hoping he would make it a short trip. They were already a good way away from the Sun Princess. Personal watercraft were not allowed close to the beach but this far out from the shore there were a few jet-skis and speed boats racing around.
Arianna suddenly saw a jet-ski moving rapidly over the water heading towards them. She tapped Hugo’s shoulder to alert him to the danger and he pulled the handlebars round to turn their jet-ski in a different direction. But they were moving too fast to make such a sharp turn. Everything happened so quickly that Arianna barely had time to cry out as she and Hugo were thrown off the jet-ski.
The shock of landing in the cold sea made her gasp, and she choked as she took a mouthful of water. The ill-fitting life-jacket did not support her properly and her face was partially submerged. A little way off the rider-less jet-ski was still hurtling round in circles, causing a whirlpool effect that was dragging Arianna under. She realised that Hugo must not have attached the kill cord which would have stopped the jet-ski’s engine when he had been thrown off.
Terrified, she gasped for breath and her mouth filled with water again as waves created by the out-of-control jet-ski crashed over her head. Memories of when she had almost drowned as a child flashed into her mind and she thrashed her arms and kicked her legs to try to keep afloat.
The other jet-ski that moments ago had been racing across the water now slowed down and came up close to Arianna.
‘Signorina!’
The rider held out his hand, indicating that he would pull her onto his jet-ski. But she could not move and she felt numb with shock and fear as her face slipped beneath the surface again and her nostrils filled with water.
‘Arianna, hang on. I’m coming for you.’
Startled to hear a familiar, commanding voice, she turned her head and saw Santino in the motor launch that was being driven by one of the yacht’s crewmen.
‘Signorina, take my hand.’
The stranger on the jet-ski leaned down and tried to grab hold of Arianna’s shoulder. She heard a splash, and when she looked back at the launch she saw that Santino had dived in to the sea and was swimming towards her. In a matter of seconds he was beside her and wrapped his arms around her, lifting her up so that her face was out of the water.
‘I’ve got you, baby.’
His voice was oddly rough, almost as if he was concerned for her, as if he cared—which obviously was a figment of her imagination, Arianna told herself. But she curled her arms around his neck and clung to him, weak with relief that her life was not going to end at the bottom of the ocean. She was vaguely aware that the stranger on the jet-ski turned his craft around and raced away. Santino hooked his arm around her beneath her breasts and towed her to the launch where the crewman helped to pull her on board.
Reaction set in and she hugged her arms around her and fought off a surge of nausea. Santino had climbed back onto the boat, and he draped a towel around her shoulders. He hunkered down in front of her, and even in her shocked state she noticed that he had stripped off his jeans and T-shirt before he’d dived in to the sea and his wet boxer shorts clung to his hips.
‘Next time, make sure you wear a life-vest that fits,’ he growled.
Arianna couldn’t stop shivering. ‘Where’s Hugo?’ she asked through her chattering teeth.
‘Another crewman managed to jump from the launch onto the jet-ski and take control of it before he picked your boyfriend up.’ Santino frowned as a shudder ran through her. He lifted his hand and smoothed her wet hair back from her face. ‘You had a bad scare, but you’re safe now, piccola.’
The gentle endearment—she knew that the English translation was ‘little one’—was her undoing. She had been so afraid, and without Santino’s quick actions it was very likely that she would have drowned. Arianna bit down hard on her lip but her emotions overwhelmed her and she burst into tears. ‘I thought I was going to drown,’ she choked. ‘The life-jacket didn’t keep me afloat and I can’t swim.’
Santino swore as he put his arms around her and pulled her close. His wet chest hairs felt soft beneath Arianna’s cheek and the powerful thud of his heart reverberated through her. She heard him speaking in Italian and was aware that the launch was moving, but even though she was safe she couldn’t forget those terrifying moments when her mouth had filled with sea water. She wanted to be able to shrug off what had happened as another stupid scrape that she had a reputation for getting herself into. But she couldn’t pull herself together and she pressed her face into Santino’s chest to muffle her sobs.
CHAPTER FOUR
SANTINO WAS NOT good with tears. They made him uncomfortable and reminded him too much of when his mother had died and his father had wept like a child. Antonio Vasari’s outpouring of raw emotion had seemed shameful to his fifteen-year-old son. Santino had not known how to cope with the stranger his father had become.
The once strong, cheerful man whom Santino had idolised had been destroyed by grief as surely as Santino’s mother’s life had been destroyed by an aggressive brain tumour. The specialist had given Dawn Vasari a year to live, but she’d lasted barely six months, leaving behind a heartbroken hus
band, teenage son and eight-year-old daughter.
Santino had begged his father to take the family back to Sicily, from where they had moved to Devon a year before his mother’s illness had been diagnosed. But Antonio had refused to leave the place where his wife had been born and had died unfairly young. Santino’s memories of his late teens were of roaming over desolate Dartmoor for hours, often days, at a time, trying to make sense of life and loss and the realisation that love was not worth the agony.
He had cried on the day of his mother’s funeral, alone in his bedroom, while his father and sister and his mother’s relatives had been downstairs, united somehow in their grief. But he’d felt like an outsider and he hadn’t wanted their sympathy. He’d wanted to punch something. His tears had not helped to ease the pain in his heart and he hadn’t cried again. Ever.
He understood fear. He’d seen it in the eyes of some of the men from his patrol in Afghanistan when they had been ambushed and for a while it had looked as if none of them would survive. He knew what it was like to look death in the face. He tightened his arms around Arianna’s trembling body and let her cry it out.
Grimly he acknowledged that he had failed to protect her. He’d jumped into the launch as soon as he’d seen her on the back of the jet-ski, and witnessing the accident when she’d been thrown into the sea had caused his heart to miss a beat. He frowned as he recalled the dangerous behaviour of the other jet-skier. The rider had appeared deliberately to drive towards the craft that Arianna and her friend had been on. It was almost as if he’d wanted to cause an accident. And then he’d tried to pull Arianna onto his jet-ski. Had the jet-skier wanted to rescue her, or had there been something more sinister behind his actions?
Santino ran his hand around the back of his neck and over his scar. The kidnappers must be aware that Arianna was in Positano after she’d appeared on the front page of the newspapers. But how could they have known that she had gone out on the jet-ski unless they had been close by—perhaps on one of the other yachts anchored in the bay—and had been watching her through binoculars? The incident with the jet-skis was probably nothing to worry about, he tried to reassure himself. But his instincts warned him that the threat to Arianna was very real.
The launch stopped in the shallows close to a small, secluded beach that was not often discovered by tourists. As Santino had hoped, it was empty. After giving instructions to the crewman, he scooped Arianna into his arms and carried her up the beach, depositing her carefully on the sand and dropping down onto his knees beside her.
‘Lie back while I check you over,’ he ordered after he’d helped her out of the life-jacket. To his surprise she did not argue. ‘Are you hurt anywhere? Your body took quite an impact when you came off the jet-ski at speed and hit the water.’
‘I’m okay.’ Her eyes were closed and she spoke so softly that he had to lean closer to hear her. ‘I’m just shaken up.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ He felt a knot of tension in his gut when he thought of how easily she could have drowned if he hadn’t reached her in time.
Her lashes flew open and he stared into her big brown eyes, watching the golden flecks on her irises reflect the gleam from the sun in the cobalt-blue sky above them. She was so goddamned beautiful. He pushed the thought away, determined to remain professional as he ran his hands over her arms and down her legs, checking for any broken bones.
‘Why did you go on the jet-ski if you can’t swim?’
‘Because I’m an idiot. That’s what you think, isn’t it?’ she said flatly. ‘It’s the opinion my father has of me—when he thinks of me at all, which isn’t very often.’
Santino didn’t know what to make of this different Arianna with hurt in her voice and that air of vulnerability that he’d assumed was an act when they had been at the Villa Cadenza. He’d felt certain that he had her measure. Spoilt and privileged with little of substance beneath her exquisite packaging. He frowned as he remembered that he’d found Randolph Fitzgerald a cold and arrogant man when he had met him.
‘I don’t think you are an idiot,’ he said roughly. ‘How come you never learned to swim when there’s that amazing pool at Villa Cadenza?’
‘I nearly drowned when I was a young child. I must have only been three or four and the incident left me with a fear of being out of my depth in water.’ Catching his questioning look, she explained, ‘I was with my parents at a hotel somewhere. I don’t remember where. My father travels around the world for his business, and before my parents’ marriage broke up my mother and I occasionally went with him.
‘On the day that it happened my father had taken me to play in the shallow part of the pool. But while he was talking on his phone I must have waded deeper. I was terrified when I realised that I couldn’t feel the floor of the pool beneath my feet. I remember calling to my father, but he was some distance away, and because he was on his phone he didn’t hear me.’
Arianna sat up and hugged her knees to her chest. ‘I remember the sensation of my mouth filling with water. I was choking and couldn’t breathe. Luckily another hotel guest arrived at the pool and jumped in and saved me from drowning. When my father finally finished his phone call, he told me off for misbehaving.’ She gave a humourless laugh. ‘I learned two valuable lessons that day. The first to be fearful of deep water, and the second that my father has little interest in me.’
‘It’s true that a traumatic event in childhood or teenage years can affect people in their adult lives,’ Santino said, remembering the anger that had eaten away at him for a long time after his mother’s death. Joining the army had given him a sense of belonging and purpose and he’d learned to deal with his anger. But fighting in a brutal war that had cost the lives of a couple of his close friends had reinforced his wariness—he refused to call it fear—of emotional attachments.
‘I tried hypnotism once to try to get over my fear of drowning, but I panic when my face is in the water,’ Arianna admitted. ‘When my father sent me out of his way to Villa Cadenza every summer, a few of my nannies tried to teach me to swim, but I made such a fuss that they gave up.’
‘In future I suggest that you don’t allow your boyfriend to take you for a ride on a jet-ski,’ Santino growled. He could not understand why, when he had seen Arianna climb onto the jet-ski and wrap her arms around the fair-haired Englishman, he’d felt as though he’d been punched in his stomach. The feeling could not have been jealousy, he assured himself, because no woman had ever evoked that emotion in him—or indeed any emotion other than sexual desire.
Arianna sent him a quick glance. ‘Hugo isn’t my boyfriend.’
‘Your friend Lady Davina something-or-other told me that you’re involved with this Hugo guy.’
‘She probably said it because she fancies you and wanted to take me out of the competition.’ Arianna gave one of those maddeningly nonchalant shrugs that, for reasons he was unable to explain, Santino found infuriating. ‘But Davina needn’t have worried. I’m not interested in you.’
‘No?’ The word hung in the hot summer’s afternoon air, an unintentional challenge—or maybe not unintentional, Santino acknowledged self-derisively as his eyes locked with Arianna’s. Adrenalin was still pumping through him after rescuing her from the sea, and his relief had been mixed with an indefinable emotion when she’d wept in his arms.
Tears still clung to her lashes, but he watched her eyes darken, the pupils dilating. Sexual tension had simmered between them by the pool at Villa Cadenza. Santino had taken one look at her and something had shifted deep inside him. He had told himself it was lust, for how could it be anything else, anything more?
Here on the secluded beach it was as if only the two of them existed. Like the biblical Adam tempted by Eve’s sensual promise, he could not take his eyes from Arianna wearing another sexy bikini that showed off her stunning figure. He was conscious of his heart pounding in his chest and the heat of the sun on his back a
s he slowly bent his head.
Her breasts rose and fell, and he heard her swiftly indrawn breath, but she did not move—she simply stared at him with her brown eyes lit with gold. She was an irresistible temptation and with a low groan he claimed her mouth with his.
He tasted salt from the sea on her lips and when he dipped his tongue into her mouth her sweet breath mingled with his. She hesitated for a heartbeat that felt to Santino like a lifetime. With a sense of urgency he had never experienced before he increased the pressure of his lips on hers, and his heart clattered against his ribs when she tipped her head back and opened her mouth to him.
Her surrender shattered the last remnants of his self-control. Santino forgot the rules he had set himself as he deepened the kiss and explored the sensual shape of her lips before he delved into her mouth and tangled his tongue with hers. It was hot and intense. He was blown away by Arianna’s passionate response as he felt a shudder run through her when he trailed his lips over her cheek and gently nipped her ear lobe with his teeth.
He kissed his way down her elegant neck and along the fragile line of her collar bone. Her skin was like satin and her breasts felt soft against the hard wall of his chest when he slid his arms around her and pulled her into his heat. She moved her hands up to his shoulders and he eased her down onto the sand, stretching out beside her so that he could skim his fingertips over the tantalising dips and curves of her body.
Her narrow waist fascinated him, the gentle flare of her hips even more so. He was so hard it hurt. He thought he might explode if he did not have her, if he did not sink between her silken thighs and drive his shaft home. The feminine scent of her arousal was the sweetest fragrance and he was certain that her hunger was as intense his. Her breathing was as unsteady as the erratic thud of his heart.
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